


the universe shifted sideways

by adreadfulidea



Category: Rocketman (2019)
Genre: Emotional Caretaking, Fluff, M/M, Praise Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 08:00:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20671955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: A lot of love stories end with a kiss. This one begins with one.





	the universe shifted sideways

**Author's Note:**

> Bernie appears to be calling him Reggie most of the time at this point in the film, which is why I use that instead of Elton here.

A lot of love stories end with a kiss. This one begins with one.

Bernie couldn’t have said, later, exactly why he didn’t stop Reggie when he started leaning in. If he’d wanted an excuse he could have said that he was drunk, or that he was surprised; he’d been both those things. Neither was why he didn’t move away. The truth was that at the time the movement had seemed as gentle and inevitable as a falling star. Just the two of them, the way it often was, except more than that. So Bernie closed his eyes and he let his best friend kiss him, and he liked it. He liked the press of Reggie’s mouth against his, the way he could feel the slight bump of his teeth, the hand that had settled carefully on the back of Bernie’s neck. He liked it until Arabella’s buzzsaw voice floated up from the skylight, calling for Reggie to come to bed.

They broke apart immediately, and whatever magic had suddenly materialised between them was gone just as quickly. Now Bernie noticed that the rooftop was cold and so was he, that his head was spinning from the drink, that he needed to go have a lie down. And Reggie looked at him so strangely, like he was about to apologize. It would have been terrible somehow if he had. But he didn’t; he laughed instead, or it was almost a laugh.

“Well,” he said, and that was all. They went inside, and they didn’t talk about it anymore. Bernie might have thought it was all a dream by the next morning, if not for the way Reg wouldn’t look him in the face.

So he didn’t say anything. But he thought about it.

One smashed piano later and the prodigal son returned home, Bernie in tow. He’d wilted alarmingly on the way there, like a houseplant left without water, and it occurred to Bernie that he didn’t know very much about Reggie’s family at all. He hadn’t asked, either, and maybe he should have, but Bernie rarely felt comfortable pressing anyone for information that way because he hated it when someone did it to him. He froze up under interrogation, no matter how well meant. The good thing about being friends with Reggie was that he didn’t care how much Bernie talked or not and he never made him feel badly for it. One of the good things.

So Bernie followed him, as it were, into the lion’s den. He was starting to think he’d follow Reggie just about anywhere. He was also afraid Reggie’s mother was going to take one look at him and see the guilty memory of that kiss wriggling inside his head like a glowing worm.

She was a sharp-eyed woman with a plump, pretty face and a way of watching Bernie that reminded him of the birds of prey he’d seen on nature programmes. “So,” she’d said upon being introduced. “_You’re_ Bernie. We’ve heard so much about you,” in a tone that suggested she’d heard nothing good. Bernie had glanced sideways at Reggie, who was visibly in such an agony of embarrassment and horror that he might expire on the spot if something wasn’t done about it.

“Reggie’s told me all about you as well,” Bernie said, as politely as he could.

She exhaled a plume of smoke and tapped her cigarette out in an ashtray. “Really.”

Later, in Reggie’s room — they had Bernie in one off the kitchen, and it always smelled like cooking — they sat on his bed and tried to strategize their way out of the situation. “We are not going to be here forever,” said Reggie, determined and desperate both. “You hear me? I promise you that. I’ll live on the streets of London first. I’ll peddle vacuum cleaners door to door if I have to. I’ll —” He stopped, noticing that Bernie was watching him closely. “_What?_”

“You told your Mum about me?”

“God,” said Reggie, falling back against the mattress. He covered his face with the pillow, his voice muffled. “Shut up.” Bernie tried to take it from him, and then Reg hit him with it, and they were going to be absolutely fine.

The days dragged on inside the house where time seemed to freeze. Bernie would have bet that nothing in it had been changed since the forties; not the cocktail glasses in the cupboards, not the striped wallpaper in his room, not the quilt he slept under at night. The pub down the way was just the same, and the other houses on the street. He was beginning to feel like he was back there too. It was strange to think that they were still in London at all, that Carnaby Street and this lace doily of a home could exist in the same place. And he was worried about Reggie. The walls were too close, Bernie thought, and dreamt of wide open spaces and nothing holding them back.

Where would he go, if he could? Out in the country, like where he used to live, except nicer and cleaner and with more money. Reggie would hate it. But he might go one day, if Bernie asked. His trouble was that he’d never gotten over craving the sky overhead when other people were content with living in little boxes. At their old place he used to go up to the roof. He couldn’t do that here, so he smuggled some grass into the house instead and he and Reggie lit up one afternoon when the family was out on errands.

It wasn’t very good, thin and dry with a smell like burning hay. Still, it did the trick. “She’ll kill us if she finds out,” Reggie said, his eyes very wide, sucking on the end of the joint nonetheless.

“Does she know what it is?” Bernie asked, and for some reason it struck them both as being funny, so fucking funny that they couldn’t stay upright. Bernie ended up sitting with his back to the wall and Reggie was sprawled on the floor with his head in Bernie’s lap. It was far too close to a compromising position and neither of them could bring themselves to move, though Bernie kept an ear cocked for the sound of the door downstairs.

He looked around the room. “You’ve a lot of awards,” he said. “From school and the like?”

“Music,” Reggie said. “They’re all for music.”

“Ah,” said Bernie. “Because you went to that posh music school.”

“They were posh. I wasn’t.”

“Posh compared to present company. We didn’t have electricity when I was born.”

“You’re making that up!”

“I’m not,” he said, laughing. “There’s more to the world than London, you know.”

“I know,” Reggie said. “I just haven’t seen much of it, is all.” He looked up at Bernie, who noticed he had quite lovely eyes, really, behind the glasses. He had an urge to lean forward and take them off, but kept his hands where they were, curled loosely into fists at the top of his thighs.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Reggie asked.

“About the electricity?”

“About you. In general. You don’t talk about yourself.”

Bernie shrugged, his head tipping back. The ceiling swam into view. “I’m not an interesting subject, I suppose.” He was fairly dull, all considered. And he didn’t expect Reggie, who shone as brightly as anything he’d ever seen, to understand.

Reggie tugged on his shirt, and when that didn’t get his attention he reached up and tapped his chin until it did.

“Jesus,” said Bernie, swatting his hand away. “What?”

“You’re a very interesting subject,” Reggie said. “You’re my favorite subject. I told my Mum about you.” He smiled, guileless and gap-toothed, and Bernie wanted — he wanted —

“You’re a good boy, Reg,” he said. “A very good boy.”

Reggie inhaled a sharp, startled breath. Bernie watched him do it, and watched the line of his throat when he swallowed. There was longing in his face, real and almost frightening, the kind Bernie had never once seen directed at him. His own mouth had gone dry. It felt like something was about to happen; the air before a storm.

“_Don’t_,” Reg said. He jerked upright, scrambling onto his hands and knees. Like he couldn’t wait to get away from Bernie, and that was exactly what he did. Left him alone in the room, sitting with his back against the wall.

“Fuck,” Bernie said.

They circled around each other like nervous cats for days. Bernie didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything, frozen in place like he used to get when he was a kid, back when he thought maybe there was something wrong with him because words didn’t come easy the way they did with other people. Quiet as a church mouse, everyone said, in a tone that was half fondness and half concern and all condescension. “You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t learn to talk to people,” his father had told him, and he’d meant well. It wasn’t so simple. He’d started writing down all the things he wanted to say instead.

“Are you alright, dear?” Reggie’s Gran asked one night when he came into the kitchen looking for tea, unable to sleep. “You look a bit peaky.”

Bernie plastered a smile on his face. “Fine, ma’am.” It’s only that I think I might be in love your grandson, and he won’t _look_ at me.

“I like to sit up a bit at night,” she said. “To relax. The house _can_ be so noisy during the day. Would you like a cup of tea?” Without waiting for an answer, she popped up to put the kettle on.

“I was having a little trouble sleeping,” he said, surprising himself, and immediately became terrified that she would ask him why.

She didn’t, though. “I get like that myself,” she said. “So does Reggie, when he’s upset. Or very happy. He’s so excitable, really.”

Bernie smiled, unable to help himself. “He is.”

“Is he all right, being back here?”

Bernie looked up, startled, but she was smiling benignly.

“It’s only that it can’t be very fun for either of you,” she said, “being stuck with all us old people for company.” She poured the tea and brought it over, a cup each. “Don’t tell Sheila I said that. But — I know when I was young the last thing I wanted was to have a conversation with anyone past forty.”

“I’m enjoying this one,” he said, honestly, and she laughed.

“You’re a very nice young man,” she said. “I’m glad you’re Reggie’s friend. He could use one like you.”

Bernie nodded, a lump in his throat. One like him. Was that what he wanted, being Reggie’s friend? Would he even have that, after everything was said and done? If only they had some privacy, he thought. Some space. A place where they could work things out between themselves.

He wrote the song the next day, so fast it was like had a fever.

“It’s easy,” Reggie said, his fingers moving along the keys like it was true.

Everyone was out on some business of their own except for them. Not for long, Bernie was sure, but they had the house to themselves. It was time to make his move. Which of course meant that he couldn’t.

“It’s not easy,” Bernie said. “Otherwise everyone would be doing it.”

They sat side by side at the piano bench, knees and elbows bumping together. Officially they were meant to be working. In reality they were messing about like schoolboys with a free afternoon. Reggie smiled at him, something soft in his eyes, and Bernie looked down at his hands sitting silently on the keys, hands that couldn’t create music, that had never done anything more important than farmwork or shooting billiards.

“How’d you know?” he asked. “What you wanted to be doing?”

Reggie shrugged. “Just always did, I suppose. Not my whole life, but most of it. It’s the only thing I’m really good at.”

“I wanted to be a poet,” said Bernie.

“You’d be a lovely poet, Bernie.”

Bernie ducked his head, hiding his smile. “Nobody wants poetry anymore,” he said. “Poetry means a coldwater flat and borrowing money off your Mum. I’d rather be a songwriter.” He pressed down on one of the keys.

“We’ll make it,” Reggie said. “We have to, don’t we?”

“Play me something,” Bernie said. “And I’ll write lyrics for it. It’ll be our first big hit.” Their first big hit was already there, written in an agony of unexpressed love. It had lured him back down the stairs so he could listen from the doorway, with too much showing in his face. But he didn’t know that yet.

Right now it was just him and Reg at a piano, and he wasn’t sure of anything.

“Moody? Cheerful? What mood are you asking for?”

“Whatever you want. It’s up to you.”

Reggie was quiet for a minute. “I want to teach you something,” he said, and reached for Bernie’s hand.

He placed his hand directly over Bernie’s, like they were mirror images of one another, every knuckle and fingerprint matching up. “See,” he said, and pressed one finger down until it touched the key underneath it. “It’s easy.” The note rang out clear as a bell. He kept going until a melody formed, something familiar but impossible to place.

“What is that?” Bernie asked. “Something classical?”

A grin popped up on Reggie’s face. “Chopsticks,” he said.

Bernie elbowed him in the side. “Fuck _off_.”

“It’s classical, isn’t it?”

“Classical my arse.”

“I could teach you Mozart. Or Beethoven.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Bernie said. “But I don’t think you could.”

“It’s easy.”

“Easy for you,” Bernie said. “But you’re not just anybody, are you?”

Reggie took his hands off the keys, turning sharply in Bernie’s direction. “Do you — do you actually believe that?” His cheeks were flushing with some unidentifiable emotion and Bernie couldn’t stop looking at him. He was always so _there_, Bernie thought, in a way that most people weren’t, in a way that Bernie himself was not, all raw nerve and open heart. Or maybe it was just that he was worse at hiding than most of them. Reggie’s chin firmed up, stubborn. “Don’t say it unless you mean it,” he said.

“Of course I mean it,” Bernie said, his heart pounding. “What do you think the song’s about?”

This time, when they kissed, it was a lot fiercer. And hotter, Bernie’s mouth opening against Reggie’s, his hands scrabbling for purchase on his shoulders. Reggie panted out some half formed word, and maybe it was Bernie’s name, only Bernie didn’t know because he kissed Reggie and cut him off, and then again after that, until they slid sideways against the keys and the piano made some unholy noise.

Also, the front door started opening.

Bernie slid away from Reggie, down to the other end of the piano bench so fast his elbow dragged along the keys. It sounded like it was falling down the stairs. “Good god,” said Sheila, dropping her keys into a bowl kept by the door without looking over and balancing a bag of groceries on her hip. “I thought you were meant to know how to play.”

Reggie shot him a startled, guilty glance that could have indicated anything, regret or hope or anything, and Bernie was going to fucking scream, he really was.

Bernie couldn’t sleep that night, and he didn’t want to sneak out to the kitchen and be confronted by a member of the family again. So he lay on his bed, still dressed, and stared at the cracks in the ceiling until his eyes felt like they were crossing. He was saved by a knock on his door.

He opened it as quietly as possible, but Reggie still held his finger up to his lips as he hustled into the room. “They can’t hear,” he said, and then, without pausing for a breath: “Was it true? About the song?”

“Have I ever lied to you?,” Bernie asked, and felt his face heat up. It was a hell of a confession to be making at two in the morning, short on sleep and in his friend’s Mum’s house. They looked at each other awkwardly for a minute, and then Reg started to smile, and then he kissed Bernie. It was as much a relief as cold water on a hot day, and it sent a thrill through him that reached his toes.

“You could’ve just said,” Reggie whispered.

“I did say,” Bernie told him, and with his heart in his throat, pulled him over to the bed.

It was easier when they got there, somehow. It was easy to kiss Reggie on the corner of his jaw, the curve of his ear. And Bernie, who had always had trouble speaking up, couldn’t stop talking. He told Reggie how bad he’d wanted this, that he couldn’t stop looking at him, that he was _beautiful _—

“_God,_” Reggie said, low and ragged, and flipped him onto his back.

They didn’t take off their clothes. They didn’t have the time, too busy clutching at each other, rutting together like animals. It was one part natural desire and one part needing to claw some kind of pleasure from each other before someone walked in and made them stop. Bernie got his hands under Reggie’s shirt and slid them up the warm, smooth expanse of his back. It was a messy kind of joy, their mouths open against each other without quite kissing, just panting together, laughing when Bernie’s hips hitched up of their own accord or Reggie nipped him on the ticklish side of his neck. It wasn’t much like he’d imagined sex to be — it was better.

He wrapped his legs around Reggie’s waist to give him a better angle, grunting in surprise at how _good _it felt. And that was all it was, this rolling incredible feeling, no thinking at all, his brain gone soft with white noise. “You’re hard,” he said, almost in shock, and pushed a hand between them to palm at the bulge in Reggie’s trousers.

Reggie reached down, gasping, and held it there. He rocked into the cradle of their fingers and moaned low in the back of his throat. His eyes were screwed shut, his face flushed. Bernie couldn’t stop looking. It was the hottest thing that had ever happened to him.

“Are you coming?” he asked, “are you —”

“Oh fuck,” Reggie said. “Don’t, Bernie, _don’t _—” and then he _was _coming, unmistakably, warmth spreading under Bernie’s hand and his whole body going tight and then loose.

“Jesus,” said Bernie, and let go to desperately pull at his own zipper. He managed to get it open with Reggie’s help — whose hands were steadier than his own — and then he was curling a hand around himself and stroking rough and fast. He was so hard it hurt; his prick felt like it was going to burst.

“_Oh_,” said Reggie, in this incredibly intoxicating greedy way, like watching Bernie wank himself off was everything he’d ever wanted. “Here — here, Bernie, let me do it —” And when Bernie wouldn’t move his hand, when he couldn’t, too close to stop — Reggie leaned forward and tried to fit his mouth over the head of his cock, the wet flat of his tongue swiping across it.

Bernie made a sharp, high sound that he hoped to god that nobody heard and came in long pulses across Reggie’s face. Reggie pulled back, blinking rapidly; he hadn’t even taken off his glasses, and they sat crooked on his nose, splattered with come.

“It was an accident,” Bernie said, his arousal fading and leaving profound embarrassment in its wake. “I didn’t mean to.”

Reggie started to laugh, the sound bubbling up inside him in an uncontrollable wave. He hid his face in the sheets, which he also used to clean himself off.

“Don’t worry,” he said, re-emerging to kiss Bernie, almost shyly after everything they’d done. “I don’t mind at all.”


End file.
